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![]() In 1980 I was leading the perfect life. I was 20 years old, making great money putting thermal protection tiles on the first space shuttle at Kennedy Space Center by night and spending my days at the beach surfing. Then came the layoff. I was now competing with degreed engineers for low level labor jobs. From the finely tuned mind of an irresponsible lad in his early twenties came a flash of brilliance. I needed to get an education and make money at the same time (Oh, a sharp one this fellow). Now, who would pay me to go to school? Why the U.S. Navy of course! The recruiter told me I could choose from a wide variety of their advanced technical fields and they might even send me to Hawaii (a.k.a. surfers' Mecca). They say one is born every minute, I signed on the dotted line for the whole six years. In making the very important life altering decision, I chose the advanced electronics program because I wanted to know how my stereo worked (see, there is that sharp mind again, honed like a razor). After 6 years I was a Petty officer 1st class and a certified "submarine inertial navigation computer system expert" (try saying that 3 times quickly). I was also a Navy Diver (whole 'nother story). I had also had enough of being stuck in a piece of pipe roaming around under the ocean while everyone else went surfing, so I returned to civilian life. Coincidentally as I ended my enlistment the whole U.S. defense industry fell off the edge of the world. Nobody was hiring "submarine inertial navigation computer system experts". So in another flash of brilliance I responded to a help-wanted add for a diver. I ended up cleaning boat bottoms in San Diego bay (Good thing I spent six years of the tax payers money learning to troubleshoot six layer boards to component level). The first thing I figured out was the guy I was working for was doing it all wrong, so I started my own company with 1 customer. By the time my running mate from the Navy finished his enlistment a year later I was swamped and he came in as my partner. It was 1989 and immediately apparent we needed one of those personal computers "things" to keep track of the records and do billing. My partner's sister's boyfriend was in town for a visit and he was a "network administrator" (for all we knew that could have been another way to say he was prime emperor of Jupiter) maybe he could help us? And help us he did. In a matter of days he gave us enough guidance to place us years ahead of our competitors. He told us we would soon out grow out of our little MS Works 2.0 program, Maybe we should look into a program called (a flourish of trumpets should sound here) PARADOX! The business grew incredibly fast. We started with Paradox version 3.5 (dos). It amazed me how it could manage so much information. When the Windows version came out we jumped on it and went NT. "Some people like the carousel, it just goes round and round, same thing all the time. I like the roller coaster, you never know what is going to happen next." from the movie "The Parenthood" Someplace in the middle of all this an incredible woman bewitched me. She was staying with a friend to surf in a contest in California. Since my friend had to work and I had a flexible schedule, she asked me to take this lady surfing. In a matter of hours we knew there was something going on between us. She ended up moving to California with me. On a vacation to visit family in Florida we decided on a Monday to get married on Friday, and we did. It was a beautiful small ceremony, on the beach where her mother had been return to the sea. Everyone was barefoot, bride included. 10 years later, I no longer did the physical labor. We were too busy managing 800+ scheduled clients. Instead of just doing dive work we had several dozen company members and at least as many sub-contractors doing everything but building the boats. And in Paradox, I learned ObjectPal, built a suite of apps and tuned it as we went. While not always elegant I got the job done and kept pace with the business. In 1999 my wife and I looked at life in southern California. No matter how much money we made, it would never be enough. Sometimes in a slow week I would get to work less than 100 hours. We were raising children and missed the values growing up in the south taught us (large country boys named Bubba and Tiny don't care who your parents will sue, if you get out of line you are going to get whupped. If Bubba and Tiny had to whup you, you got it again from Dad for making them do it). The business was in great shape so we sold out and moved back to Florida. I took a year off to do important things, like teach my youngest how to swim and surf, take the kids to school each day, built my dad a nice computer, help my wife with house work and go surfing (after 30+ years the surfing thing is way beyond an addiction). I have a small business again. I do residential and small business computer services/consulting and (obviously) write Paradox applications. I am getting ready to go at it all again because of the demand for program updates bringing paradox data to the Internet (thank you Tony McGuire) has created for me. Check out these articles written by Jeff : Getting Started - What Are Libraries and How Are They Used Paradox Community Newsgroups |
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